- Trust -
Shikamaru spins threads of shadow over Tayuya's body. He weaves and wraps. Smaller. Finer. They bite into Tayuya's skin like razor wire cutting through an apple core. He watches her bleed as she struggles against the shadows in his outstretched hand.
He feels the sickness of the soldier pill in his stomach. His arms tremble as the aftereffects begin wracking his body with nerve pain. He knows he's going to have cramps for days after this nightmare is finally over. Except, it's never going to be over. The pain in his limbs is nothing compared to the guilt that grips his heart in a vice.
Because while he still wants to kill Tayuya… he recognizes he's been reacting on adrenaline and fear. He's high on self preservation and low with rage. He wants brutal revenge for the death of his teammates. He wants to make Tayuya pay for the lives she'd taken.
But then Sakura does the last thing he'd ever be able to do.
She puts her brow to Tayuya's head and….they slip into some kind of trance together. In that moment, the rage on Tayuya's face slips with it.
She still fights against him tooth and nail, but Sakura's Jutsu seems to be is holding back the worst of it. She's put Tayuya under some kind of Genjutsu. Her face becomes slack, unresponsive.
Here, in the last of the dying light, he sees Tayuya for what she really is.
She's just… another girl. There are bags under her eyes from where she hasn't slept. Her cheeks are hollow because she hasn't eaten. She hasn't neglected herself, she's been neglected. She wasn't a monster born, but a monster made. Whether he'd known it or not, he'd had a hand in creating her. Part of this...was his fault.
He wants so badly to kill her. He wants so badly to save Utsuho. He's ready to save Sakura the only way he knows how. He's seconds away from dissecting Tayuya into thousands of unsalvageable pieces. He wants her to die like Ruya did. He wants to scatter her in every direction so that even in death, she will never be whole.
But his motivations go beyond just wanting to inflict pain. Given a choice, he will always choose the lives of his friends over anyone else's, even while wishing he didn't have to choose at all.
But Sakura had asked him to trust her.
And he did. So he does.
He'd spent his whole life running from responsibility. He might not be responsible for everything that happened to Tayuya before… But he was responsible for everything that happened next. He'd thought that adulthood had hunted him down in the form of a job he hadn't wanted.
…In the dirt at Tayuya's feet, he'd finally found his bravery. But now, with his noose around her throat… he finds his mercy too.
He hates himself. He respects himself…
He loosens the threads of his shadows just enough. Just enough that he's still ready to strike her down in an instant if Sakura needs him to. Just enough to keep Tayuya from slipping her noose and making good on all her threats. Revenge sits on him like a lead vest, demanding him to stand up and be a fucking man.
But in the end…he trusts Sakura. She will tell him how to play this one out.
He feels ambient chakra build in the air. It clatters through the clearing like cicadas in summer. It calls the warning of oncoming death. It is the mouth of responsibility breathing down his neck.
Overhead, the last phosphorus flare hisses and combusts. Thirty seconds, and his last weapon will be gone….
He watches green lightning dance over Sakura's skin, She and Tayuya waking up from their spell.
Sakura opens her eyes and sees his shadows. She takes in the razor net that could end Tayuya's life. The solution that could save every life here, except one.
She looks over her shoulder and takes him. It's like she's memorizing him before she says goodbye.
"Let her go." She says, with regret.
And because he is an idiot,
he does.
- ULTRAVIOLET -
Sakura stands in a midnight clearing, channeling starlight in her hands.
Sakura knows that she can save Shikamaru. She thinks that she can save Utsuho too. But she knows now that she doesn't have to save Tayuya.
She just needs to buy enough time for Tayuya to save herself.
Sakura might not be able to take away Tayuya's rage, but she can take away her weapons.
She takes a page from Utsuho's book first.
Sakura draws back a starlight fist and shatters Tayuya's nose with meteoric impact. Tayuya can't whistle if she has to breathe through her mouth.
She pulls back her heel and knees Tayuya hard in the gut, detonating the air from her lungs. Tayuya drops hard to all fours with a cry, gasping for breath that isn't there.
She pools emerald sunlight into her palm, slamming it down onto Tayuya's shoulder. She puts seven years worth of manifested love up against seven years of poisonous hate. She cauterizes Orochimaru's mark from her body.
She lifts her hand and lifts Tayuya's curse.
She watches Tayuya's form revert in stages, from monster into animal and back into girl. She draws molten chakra into her palm, condensing it down into a green ball bearing, a bead of power no bigger than a silver bell. It's the thing she hangs all her hopes on now.
She depresses it into the back of Tayuya's neck, dropping her enemy into a coma so deep she'll sleep for an entire month. She catches Tayuya's head before it hits the ground and rests her gently onto her side.
Then, Sakura turns.
It's time to do the rest of it.
She bares her fangs and her titan heart, preparing to take away Tayuya's last weapons. Across the field, the smoke demons twine their oil slick bodies out of Utsuho's bent-back throat. They strain his limbs against Shikamaru's shadow hold, his mouth bulging like a bottleneck.
She takes a breath. She counts to 10. Not because she has to, but because she wants to. Yume is already there, waiting. He boils with power and ultraviolet light.
He puts his hand on her wounded shoulder, and she feels the pain disappear. It doesn't matter if the midnight sun sputters out, Yume is casting his own light. He is the spun filament of a burning lightbulb radiating white heat across her body. He shares his blanket of starlight with her, burning auroras across her skin.
Seven years worth of manifested chakra comes crashing back into her like a broken damn. It is an avalanche and a tidal wave. It is the orange grove and the glacial waters. It's every brilliant moment they have ever shared, and everything they had the potential to be.
Finally, they move as one, racing together across their battlefield.
She carries his power as she burns through the clearing, Yume running in lock step beside her. He goes high and she goes low, driving her shoulder into Utsuho's solarplexus. She takes his weight like he weighs nothing at all, lifting his feet clear off the ground. Behind her, Yume stretches out starlight hands.
He grabs hold of Tayuya's demons, making contact.
They might be chakra creatures, but Yume is manifested chakra too. He is the light to their corporeal void and the deep peace to their ravenous rage. He is the one thing that can reach into darkness and manifest something where nothing existed before.
He is hope.
Together, he and Sakura blaze their trail. They burn with outer fire and inner strength. In unison, they throw their bodies in opposite directions. Utsuho screams, but she grips him tighter. She holds him firm as Yume drags the billowing demons free of his throat. As the last of their bodies slither clear, Utsuho is released from their spell. He crumples, limp and boneless in her arms. Finally, he is free at last.
Tayuya's demons scream in defiance. They descend on Yume with their multitude of mouths.
Yume smiles just his one, and lets them.
Time stops. The world goes quiet.
She feels Yume push something down through their bond. Not a thought, but an image. A feeling. Something that is entirely his. In that moment, she sees herself through his eyes. She sees her broken nose and her bloodstained face. She sees her wild eyes and her titan heart.
He had loved her when she hadn't know how to love herself. She takes in her own image now, finally seeing herself the way he always did.
She was beautiful.
If Tayuya's demons are storm clouds and music, Yume-Kakashi is ultraviolet life. All at once, he releases the spell that manifested him into existence.
He had finally finished becoming. Now, he becomes something else.
Not with a whisper, but a bang.
The percussive blowback alone sends her flying. Utsuho is ripped from Sakura's fingers. She's unable to find him in the chaos of mid air. They tumble through dark skies and unending upheaval. They skid across ground, rolling together. Her ears ring out with high pitched dissonance. And then…they ring with nothing at all.
In the resulting silence, she looks around. Everyone…was alive. They were safe.
Because Shikamaru was alive, she'd been invincible. Now that they were safe...she no longer needs to be.
The midnight sun flickers out and dies.
In the dark, Sakura's body goes cold and still. Somewhere in the night sky, she finds a star.
- Stay -
Shikamaru is on her in an instant. He doesn't know what Sakura's just done, he only knows that she shouldn't have done it. He'd trusted her, and she'd lied to him. He'd trusted her, and he'd been an idiot.
He'd trusted her and she was dying, and all of it was going to be his fault.
He skids through the dirt, pulling her into his arms. He cradles her body between his legs, pulling her up into his lap. Her head lolls sideways like she's drunk.
'She'll be okay. She just needs to stay awake-'
"Sakura!? Sakura, stay with me-"
He can't make out her features in the dark. He's night blind after watching her Jutsu explode in a wave of energy you could see for miles. He can't see her, but he can feel her shaking. She's just cold, she isn't going to die-
"I…I need you to take Tayuya to Tsunade. Tell her she needs to fix it."
"We'll take her together." He begs. His arms are shaking. He's coming undone. "Stand up and we can go right now. Shut up with that stupid shit. Do...Do your healing thing. Just…do something Sakura-"
But no warm glow breaks through the dark. Now green fire cascades from her palms. He shifts her higher into his lap, pressing their temples together as one. "You're going to be okay," He says again and again. "You still have a promise to keep. I need you to stay awake so you can tell me-"
But Sakura shifts like she's uncomfortable in his arms. She looks around like she doesn't know where she is. "Shika..."
"Yeah, I'm Here. I'm right here."
"Are you safe?"
The softness of her voice absolutely breaks him. His own voice shatters into a million pieces, becoming useless and unusable. He nods his forehead against hers harder. She needs to know that Im still here.
"Where are you?" She asks, groping in the dark. Her hand finds his cheek and he covers it with his. He squeezes her shoulders in the crook of his elbow, trying to push himself into her. Into her temple. Into her hand. Into the place she's trying to go where he knows he can not follow her.
"I'm here." He whispers. "I'm here, I'm safe."
He kisses her face, her eyes, her cheeks.
"I'm safe. You found me." He rocks her, saying it over again.
I'm safe. He swears as her body goes cold.
I'm okay. He promises as her lips turn blue.
You found me. He says, even as he is lost.
Something drops to the ground beside him; Her hand falls from his cheek, limp in the grass.
Even still, Shikamaru can't let go of her. He presses their bodies together, begging.
"You're the strongest person I know." He chokes. "I don't know how you always manage to care so much, but you do. You care so much about everybody. You make me want to care, and you make me want to try. So…I need you to stay with me, okay-"
He continues rocking them as his legs go numb. He can't see her breath in the cold winter air anymore.
He screams Sakura's name and it echoes inside him.
His voice is the last thing she hears before she dies.